From a Oaxaca village to an MIT doctorate

Ricardo Pablo Pedro, 26, is working on his doctorate, studying theoretical chemistry with the objective of creating the next generation of computer processors with smaller parts and faster chips.

The successful student is the only indigenous Mexican at MIT, but while Spanish and English are not a problem, he cannot speak the language of his mother. “She refused to teach me,” he said. She was trying to keep the youngest of her six children from being discriminated against for the way he spoke.